


Bug Gulch

by zeuswrites



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anthropomorphic, Bugs & Insects, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 04:58:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7670998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeuswrites/pseuds/zeuswrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spiders are Red, insects are Blue, and they're all trapped in Bug Gulch with each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Quiet before the storm

**Author's Note:**

> The most self-indulgent au I've ever considered doing, and I'm 100% into this. Also, only gently beta'd, so I apologize for any typos that may have slipped my attenton.
> 
> EDIT: This chapter now contains a gorgeous fanart by my friend Idler! If you're more fine with reading about spiders than seeing stylized spider imagery, don't scroll down once you see the upper edge of the image.

“Hey, you ever wonder why we’re here?”

Grif stirred underneath the sand at the question, then wriggled himself out just enough to look up at Simmons. His friend was sitting in the very center of his nerdy, geometrically perfect web, and looking over Bug Gulch wistfully, his mandibles idly kneading the air - a tic he had had for as long as Grif knew him. It was 1 pm, the height of heat and sunlight, and the Blues wouldn’t be budging for hours; that was always the time for asking _horribly stupid questions_ in the Reds’ book. It was basically a tradition.

The question itself wasn’t stupid - the entire notion that either of them would fully understand what was being asked was. They were aware of a _there_ (many _theres_ , even, as they all came to _here_ from _there_  that none of them shared) somewhere beyond the edges of _here,_ and they could assume _here_ was where they currently were _-_ with some sand, and leaves, and the fruit flies they were all sick to death of, and the odd, thin, crinkly white-and-red thing they couldn’t make sense of but that was definitely theirs, dibs, and a point of pride for Sarge nonetheless, and the sun that came up and down - but the _why_ of it seemed an odd question to ask, because where would they be if not where they were? How can one be somewhere where they’re not?

Grif pondered this, idly throwing some sand over his head, more out of habit than to hide himself. He had a vague feeling that there was some sort of reward at the end of this track of thought, but he couldn’t concentrate on it long enough to grasp it. He had already halfway forgotten the question, his thoughts ambling away from him like a caterpillar - mmm, catterpillars, been a while since he had one of those--

“I mean, here, as in, in sunlight,” Simmons clarified. “In the middle of a clearing. I molt my ass every time a bird flies over me, and I swear I’m about to catch fire up here.” He glanced down, his legs curling up a little in disdain. “At least your fat ass can hide in the sand from the heat. It’s not like anything worth catching will be out before nightfall, and the Blues sure as hell won’t nab anything.”

“Oh,”, Grif said with relief, and forcefully forgot about his existential crisis. Poof, gone. He had experience.

“I mean, I know we’re here because Sarge is absolutely sure the Blues will start growing wings any second now just to get a drop on us, and wants us to keep watch over the entire base-”

“Wait, shit, will they? Are they gonna be cocooning it up? I don’t know shit about those guys.”

“No. I mean, I’m pretty sure they… They do the larvae thing, right? They don’t change as much once they’re done with the baby fat. Fuck if I know. But I’m just wondering, why bother defending this craphole?”

“You know of any other craphole we could be defending instead? Because as far as I know, there is the Blue base-” Grif pointed with one of his back legs blindly, and already burying himself back with his front legs. He was getting fed up with questions in the middle of the goddamn day, of all times.The rest of his griping came muffled through his blanket. “- is the only other goddamn place in here. There is nothing else to the left, to the right, and most definitely not to the back. And if you figure out how to walk through the walls, well, I wanna be the first to know.”

Simmons finally shut up at that, curling in on himself further, looking thoroughly soured. None of them liked remembering that Bug Gulch was truly, honestly all they had - for a lot of reasons. Food anxiety. Little water. Cramped quarters. No mates. Pesticides, maybe, though it was typical Donut bullshit, if you asked Grif. Good old ennui. Grif could swear he saw Lopez lose a leg and shrug it off, once, but he was afraid to mention it to anyone. Everyone in here was an asshole.

For all of those, Grif had a tried and tested method. At least, worked wonders up until getting venom and insults spit at him every evening at six PM sharp, but by then he was usually too busy running laps and trying to rub off Sarge’s projectiles off of him to think about how shitty life’s been.

_Anyway._

He nuzzled himself cozier, spreading his legs around and rubbing them into the sand, and was asleep within moments, a very vague and unformed thought flickering through his head before he was out: that it was good to have a brain small enough to embrace denial. He’d have hated to be a mammal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> Artwork by [Idler](http://eoghanidler.com/). Thank you so much! <3 (Simmons is based on an Araneus Diadematus here!) 
> 
>  
> 
> Grif's a sand spider, Simmons is some sort of an orb weaver, Donut is a sparklemuffin peacock spider, Sarge is some sort of a projectile-spitting asshole spider, and Lopez is a Daddy-Long-Legs (which, if you could stand this fic long enough to read this note, you probably know isn't actually a spider).
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCFGCganiuE watch it at 0.25 speed and imagine the spider making exaggarated grunts and going-to-sleep noises all the time. That's Grif.


	2. Less Quiet, But Before The Storm Nonetheless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enter the Blue Team.

The fly was sitting in the middle of a leaf, rubbing its forelegs together and looking around jerkily. Its black and brown body stood out against the green, making it all the more exposed. It was so stupid that he almost felt sorry for it, but on the other foreleg - anything dumb enough to idle here was on evolution’s chopping block, and deserved to be eaten.

It was, after all, in Blue territory. _His_ territory. It had nobody to blame but itself.

He leaned closer, slowly, slowly, too slow to catch his prey’s eye, his green body camouflaged perfectly by the sunlight filtering through the canopy of the leaf above him. He trained his eyes on the target, and felt his legs tense in preparation for the lunge. One more split second of stillness. One more silent exhale, and-- he launched himself forward in the blink of an eye, his sharp, spiked arms slicing the air at lightning speed. The leaf wobbled from the impact of his landing.

The fly stared at him. He stared at it back. Somewhere to the left, Tucker’s chirping filled the silence, because being a non-hunting plant-eating hippie apparently left plenty of time for being an asshole.

“Mother _fucker_ ,” Church said. “I swear to god, I’m gonna find out how you keep doing this shit.”

Laughter erupted all around him. One of the onlooking flies laughed so hard that it rolled off its perch and fell to the sand with a dull sound. Church’s would-be dinner was thudding his legs on the leaf, entire body shaking. The audience started flinging pieces of rotting meat they liked to bring to the show, and Church let off a chain of juicy expletives, half-trying to deflect them with his arms, half-trying to stab the fucker in front of him.

“Shut up, everyone, shut up,” the fly suddenly sobered, gesturing around with its legs with a grave expression. The laughter trailed off, replaced with a silence full of mean-spirited anticipation. The flies, as one, leaned forward. “I think we’re being _pret-ty rude_ to our host, ain’t we not, fellas? How about a fair chance. Huh? What do you say, one best out of ten?” The peanut gallery roared again, and the fly raised its voice as it rose off the leaf and alighted on the ground below. “I won’t be moving at all! Oh my, look, I seem to have fallen to my back, y’all, how bad! Unfortunate for me! Larry, you got a plate I could put my ass on?” Church grit his mandibles and lunged blindly ahead, too pissed off to even try to concentrate.

He jabbed and stabbed the air with furious strikes, spraying dry sand around, fast enough that they could be heard even over the jeering. After almost a minute of the onslaught, his rage fuel started running out, and he slowed, then stopped slashing, panting from exhaustion. The fly was laying prone in a small crater, surrounded by significant mounds of sand. There wasn’t a scratch on it, unless one counted the fact that it apparently shat itself from laughter, but flies constantly shat themselves wherever they went, so Church couldn’t even mark this down as emotional damage. He felt several loud thuds behind him as some of the flies passed out from laughing too hard.

The fly struggled to say something, its legs kicking uselessly in the air, and a flicker of concern came across its face as it realized its situation, but Church was too pissed off to even have the last word. Foregoing mantid dignity, he sighed and then he just leaned forward and slowly bit it right in the face.

  
_That_ killed its mood. “Whoa whoa whoa, HEY!” Church ignored it in favor of slowly, resignedly skewering its body on his arm spikes. He straightened his stance, readjusted his dinner, and set to work on eating its right eye. “Dude, pal, we were just joking around! I didn’t mean that thing about you being a - man, this is so not cool, I need this to see - come the fuck on! You can eat Ollie, he’s just lying there, nobody likes Ollie-- Church! PAL!”

Church chewed sullenly, not turning around to watch the rest of the flies leave. He was glad he, at least, got to shit on their day. He may have been some motor skills short of mantis standard, but god damn it, at least he could still thoroughly waste others’ lifespans, and nobody would take that skill away from him. He hoped they’d all die of old age before they could tell anyone about this. He saw familiar movement in the peripherals of his eye, and he bit off one of the fly’s legs and canted his head slightly towards his companion to chew moodily at him.

“You ruthless maniac. You killed half of them with laughter. Fucking massacre.”

“Fuck off back to the blue fairy, Tucker. My eyesight’s just a bit off today, okay? I’ve got, uh, I’ve got pinkeye.”

“I’m talking to you! Church! Seriously, dude, you let me go now, and I promise I’ll never make fun of you ever again! Not even of the virgin thing! Or your stupid triangle head-- oh my GOD that’s my favorite leg!”

“Not gonna waste time telling you all the ways that’s bullshit. Hey, Bob, did you see what the Reds were up to before you came here?” Tucker nudged the fly’s scutum to get its attention. It ignored him, its screams turning increasingly intelligible. “Spit it out, dude, enunciate. Aw, fuck, Church, couldn’t you have eaten slower?”

“ _No._ ” Church dug into the twitching corpse in his arms, eating faster just out of spite. Bob honestly didn’t taste very well. Mostly like old, flat beer and bad hygiene. Revenge did little to season that.

Tucker stridulated in a sigh, and they settled into unpleasant silence for a couple minutes.

“Anyway,” Church finally droned, dropping the uneaten half of the thorax to the sand. He was starting to feel a bit queasy. Figures these guys would be assholes to him even in death. “Dunno about you, but I’m gonna go take a nap. Get some well-deserved rest after a full day of _sucking.”_

Tucker trilled out five rhytmic chirps at that, and Church smacked him up the head as he turned to walk away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Church's your everyday run-of-the-mill Mantis Religiosa. Tucker's a katydid cricket, picked because of their mating habits, and also because the idea of him using stridulating to _bow chicka bow wow_ things cracks me up.


End file.
